Shinybox 46MX Ribbon Mic - First Impressions/Early Review

[MrJoshua]

Yesterday my new Shinybox 46MX ribbon mic arrived via FedEx. I had to hustle to get there in time to sign for it, as I was across the street at my parents' house when the FedEx guy showed up. But, after signing for it, I carried it inside and opened the cardboard box to reveal a shiny metal box - truth in advertising! Inside of that well-padded shiny metal box was the ribbon mic, enclosed in a padded zipper pouch. It also shipped with a shockmount which so far seems solid and usable. The mic screws onto the shockmount, so it's a very firm attachment. No threat of it slipping and falling through any clips or such.

 

I haven't had time to do a full review yet, but I did take the opportunity last night to use the mic to record some scratch tracks for a song. First up was the acoustic guitar.

 

At this point I should note that there are three different versions of the 46MX available. The 46MXC has a Cinemag output transformer added. The 46MXL has a Lundahl output transformer. I'm not sure if the standard 46MX is a transformerless design or if it has a different transformer, nor have I taken mine apart to find out, but that's the one I bought. I may try one of the transformer designs later, as they're supposed to increase the high frequency response of the microphone.

 

The guitar I recorded was my Fender midrange acoustic. It has a bright sound that generally cuts through a mix well, especially with fairly new strings (which it currently has). I didn't take a lot of time with mic placement here, as it was a scratch track and would be re-recorded after tracking the drums anyway.

 

First, I plugged the Shinybox into my Groove Tubes "The Brick" preamp. I did this for two reasons. One, because the Brick is my "lowest gain" preamp and I wanted to see if it would even work properly with a ribbon mic, and two, because the idea of a ribbon mic through a tube pre just sounded like it would be fun to try. Unfortunately, the gain range of the Brick just wasn't sufficient to get a decent level from the Shinybox. So I abandoned that experiment and moved onto option two. (edit: Reading back through this I realize that it sounds like the Shinybox is my first ribbon mic. It's actually my second - I also own a BLUE Woodpecker. However, the Woodpecker is an active ribbon design with an onboard preamp that requires phantom power, and this makes it one of the hottest mics I own as far as signal strength goes. So when I talk about trying things out with a ribbon, I mean with a standard passive ribbon instead of the Woodpecker active design. -MrJ.)

 

Second up was the Focusrite ISA-428. This has a much higher available gain range than the Brick. It also has four different selectable input impedances, and I was eager to hear if there was any noticeable difference with the Shinybox on different selections.

 

After plugging in the Shinybox, it became obvious that it was going to take a lot of gain to get a usable level out of it. But the Focusrite was up to the challenge, and in fact I had gain to spare. I positioned the mic about 12" away from the guitar, pointed at the 12th fret. I'm not totally pleased with the sound I got (although as I mentioned, I didn't take much time looking for a great sound since it was a scratch track). The Shinybox is very present in the midrange, but the highs seem to roll off drastically. Switching the Focusrite impedance to its highest setting helped a bit, at least to my ears, but it was still a bit dull-sounding on the acoustic. I like a lot of treble in my acoustic sound, so it's almost more of a percussion sound. I didn't get that from the Shinybox. I'll probably try this again later to see if mic placement can make that much of a change, but for now it's not going to replace my 414 or my Baby Bottle as an acoustic mic.

 

Still, I got a usable scratch track laid down and then proceeded to the vocals. I was originally going to plug into my Grace Designs Model 101 for the vocals, but since I already had things set up with the Focusrite I decided to stick with it (after adding a good pop filter to the mic, of course). So I tweaked the gain on the mic to get it set to my voice and proceeded to lay down a scratch vocal track.

 

I liked it. A lot. To the point where I'm going to try the Shinybox first the next time I track a vocal with someone who can actually sing. Now, bear in mind that I JUST got this mic, and there's certainly some "new gear syndrome" where I want to like whatever I just bought. But I try to remember that whenever I'm trying out new gear. But at first blush I like the Shinybox through the Focusrite with my voice, and I wasn't expecting to at all. My voice has a lot of low mids and not a lot of highs, meaning it gets muddled very easily. My favorite vocal chain for a long time was an AKG 414B/XLS through my Grace 101, to keep as much of the highs as possible.

 

The Shinybox seemed a lot more natural with my voice. The highs were present but not harsh - what sounded "dull" with the guitar sounded "smooth" with my voice, if that makes any sense. I hate using such subjective terms to describe it, but there you go. The highs were still rolled off, but the upper-mids were there and sounded good. I added just a touch of treble (about 5kHz+) via shelving EQ and dialed back about 2dB at 3kHz and liked what I had.

 

So, for a $250 mic, I'm giving this an early thumbs up. The real test will come in the next few weeks when I start trying it out on guitar amps, other singers, and so on, but for now I'm cautiously optimistic. I'll probably order one of the transformer models in the next few months if I continue enjoying the performance of the standard mic.

 

And, there you go. My preliminary impressions of the Shinybox 46MX ribbon mic. For more information check out www.shinybox.com or look through your old TapeOp magazines - there was a review in there a while back.

 

Enjoy!

[hugh manatee]

I just got an Apex 205 returned from oktavamod, this has got the lundahl transformer, and i have to say I am amazed at the before and after sounds that i have. there were a few things i tried it on before sending it out, acoustic guit and bass, djembe, shaker, and male vocals. the djembe and shaker were very harsh in the before tests, now they are very smooth and detailed, the before samples of vocals proved useful for its extended low end, but needed a LDC to really get the guys voice, now the vocal sits in the mix wonderfully, almost as if it carved a place for itself, the acoustic bass is less of an astonishment, but none the less more detailed. I'll be finishing up with the A/B guitar and vocal samples this weekend, but so far, its great.

[UstadKhanAli]

Thanks for the reviews!!! I believe the Cinemag and Lundahl transformers would give the mic a hotter output, among other things. Can anyone confirm this?

[Zooey]

I've got the Shinybox 46 with Cinemag transformer. Wow--the price really jumped on those. I recall paying something like $275, not $400.

[hugh manatee]

hey i can at least speak for the lundahl, much better output, i used 30-35% less preamp gain, post mod, and have a louder signal than my pre mod samples

[MrJoshua]

Update: Electric Guitar

 

On a lark, I decided to add an electric guitar part to the scratch tracks, mainly just to see how it would sound. I was using an Ibanez (long string of letters and numbers for the model) with dual-humbucker "Designed by Duncan" pickups through an Epiphone Galaxie 10 little bitty all-tube class A combo amp. I had both pickups on, going for a chiming sort of tone since it's a pretty quick and happy pop-ish tune.

 

I placed the Shinybox about six inches in front of the amp after adjusting the guitar and amp until I liked the sound in the room. Then I plugged the Shinybox into an FMR RNP (because I do dig those Really Nice Preamps), which was then run into the converter card on the Focusrite ISA-428. So, ribbon mic -> FMR preamp -> Focusrite converters.

 

At first it was still just a touch too muddled for me. The sound was there, but I needed a little more treble. I could have added it through a plugin, but on a lark I decided to turn the mic around backwards as I've heard the back of ribbon mics is sometimes a bit brighter than the front. After turning it around I did think I noticed a bit more high end, but that could very easily have been from me moving the mic or a placebo effect as opposed to any actual increase in high end response.

 

Whatever the reason, after turning the mic backwards I was pretty happy with the sound I had, so I tracked the part. So far I feel like this is a solid mic, especially considering the price. It takes a little tweaking and some getting used to, because it's a lot different than any other mic in my collection - but that's a GOOD thing. Who wants a bunch of identical mics? It sort of defeats the purpose of having a collection when they all sound the same, IMO.

 

It's also worth mentioning that when I came back to the session today with fresh ears (before tracking the new guitar part) I was still very happy with the vocal track from yesterday. I get the feeling that the Shinybox could be my new vocal mic of choice when recording my own singing. But that will have to wait until I put together another project with lots of things stacked up, so I can see how it sounds in a big mix. For more bare-bones stuff like this, though, it's right up near the top of my list.

 

edit: Since then I've also done some tracking with the same signal path, but using a Fender Highway 1 Stratocaster instead of the Ibanez. I'm liking the Shinybox more and more in front of guitar amps. I still seem to notice a brighter sound from the back of the mic, though. Can anyone else confirm that either this does exist, or that I'm completely nuts and letting my expectations get in the way of my ears? Next I'm going to try the Shinybox alongside a standard SM-57, each on one speaker of a Marshall 2x12 closed-back cabinet with an early-70's Fender Bassman head. It'll be interesting to hear how they compare.